And the boatman had, in the event, escaped with his life. He would be living on maize gruel and mashed-up squashes for the rest of his life, but having bolted and left Lord Feathered in Black stranded he might consider himself lucky. I almost envied him. He had taken his punishment. Mine was yet to come, and it was probably going to be far worse.
‘So, it looks like you’re the boss for a day,’ Handy reminded me, ‘since I have to follow you everywhere. Where to now?’
I looked up at the sky There were no clouds. It was beginning to darken, a deeper blue washing over it from the East, with a star-studded indigo to follow. My stay of execution ended at noon the next day: I had a night and a morning.
I dismissed any thought of going to look for Nimble. Evenif I could find him in the time I had, it would only be to deliver his death warrant. I doubted that I would live long after that, whatever my master might have said.
Desperate as I was, there was only one place I could think of going. When I thought of it, I realized that that was where I might find the only person who might conceivably be able to help me.
‘I think,’ I said, unexpectedly having to squeeze the words past a sudden lump in my throat, ‘I’d like to go home.’
By ‘home’, I meant my parents’ house in Toltenco.
The name meant ‘At the Edge of the Rushes’ and it fitted the place well. It was in the south of Tenochtitlan, about as far as you could get from Skinny’s and Idle’s home in Atecocolecan without leaving the island altogether, but the two parishes had much in common. Each of them managed to give the visitor the impression that this was a place where the land could barely be bothered to stay above water: canals and streets blending into waterlogged fields and many of the houses crudely built, thrown up in obvious haste after the last flood to give their dispossessed owners a roof over their heads before the rains came again.
None of this had struck me while I was growing up. In the short time I had had between being old enough to take notice of my surroundings and being taken to the House of Tears, I had known only that we had space and clear air, unlike people who lived in the middle of the city, whose houses were all crowded together and permanently wreathed in the smoke of their neighbours’ cooking-fires. It was only later, on my rare visits to Toltenco as an adult, that I had learned to sneer at the place. Later still I had done my best to forget all about it.
Prior to my last visit to my parents’ home, I had scarcely set foot in the parish in ten years. That last visit had been onlynine days before, though, so my surroundings were more familiar than they might otherwise have been.
‘It’s not that bad,’ Handy said. ‘Our place in Atlixco isn’t much better than some of these.’
‘Maybe I’m not doing it justice. I left under a bit of cloud, after all. Still, if you’re that easily impressed, you’ll like my parents’ place. It’s on slightly higher ground, so it hardly ever floods.’
Handy dug his pole into the bottom of the canal and shoved the canoe in the direction I showed him. My master had very generously lent me a boat. I wondered where he expected me to go in it. I had spent most of the time it had taken to get to Toltenco checking to see whether he was having me followed, or was relying on my escort to keep me from straying. If I had a shadow, then he was very good at keeping himself hidden, since none of my anxious backward glances revealed anyone other than the occasional incurious passer-by
‘That’s never it there?’ Handy cried suddenly. ‘The one with the tall pole in the courtyard?’
I had to smile in spite of myself. ‘Oh yes,’ I said, without troubling to follow his stare, ‘that’ll be it. The tallest tree in Toltenco.’
The tree was a shorn trunk, dragged across the lake from where it had been felled on one of the hillsides on the mainland, and stood upright in the middle of my parents’ home. It was there for the annual festival of the Coming Down of Water, when we honoured the mountains that surrounded our valley, on account of the dark clouds that gathered around them, and the other gods who brought rain, such as Quetzalcoatl Ehecatl, Lord of the Wind, and Chalchihuitlicue. The coming night and the next day, I recalled suddenly, would see the climax of the festival. The pole would be pasted with banners made of rubber-spotted paper and offerings made tothe gods. There would be a vigil, followed by a feast. Most of my family would be at home and there would be many guests the following morning. This was one of our more enjoyable festivals, especially if you could afford to celebrate it in style. In the morning there would be food and drink in abundance, and even sacred wine, which at other times commoners were forbidden to touch.
Organizing all this was no small undertaking, and it was not cheap either. I was sure my mother would claim it was all on account of my father’s bad leg. It was especially important for the lame to placate the mountain gods. No doubt the fact that none of her neighbours could afford to put on such a show had something to do with it, though.
‘Tie up at the landing stage here,’ I said.
‘Your people do all right for themselves,’ my companion remarked as the canoe glided to a stop. ‘We couldn’t afford to set up our own pole, not when it means having to feast the singers and musicians as well. We always go to a neighbour’s house.’ There was a wistful note in his voice, no doubt because he would be missing the next day’s celebrations.
‘That’s on account of my brother. Lion sends enough home for my mother to be able to make a big splash and spend the rest of the year complaining about the mess.’
I heard my family before I saw any of them. There were not so very many of us — my parents and their grown-up children, five besides myself, and my nieces and nephews — but put them all together within the walls of a small courtyard and they could sound like a busy day at Tlatelolco market.
‘It’ll be worse tomorrow, after the guests arrive,’ I assured Handy
‘I’m sure. What are we waiting for?’
We were still standing on the landing-stage, to one side ofthe entrance, so that we were not visible from the courtyard. I pretended to inspect an imaginary crack in the smooth, newly whitewashed plaster on the wall beside me while I pondered Handy’s question. Why was I hesitating?
On my previous visit here, my father and my brothers, apart from Lion, had been away. All commoners, except slaves whose labour belonged only to their masters, could be made to work for their parish or the city, and it had been their turn. However, their task would be done by now, and they would probably be here this evening.
It had been many years since my father and I had been able to meet without practically coming to blows. Each of us had too much to resent ever to have been able to let it drop. He begrudged the price he had paid to get me into the Priest House, which had all gone to waste when I was thrown out. I blamed him for the ridicule and petty insults that had been heaped on me at home for failing in a way of life I had not chosen but had grown to love, and the bitterness and humiliation that failure had caused me.
No doubt that was it, I thought, not wanting to dwell on the alternative explanation: that when I stepped through the doorway, it would be to say goodbye for ever. Even if I tried to save my life — if, say, I were to paddle my master’s canoe to the edge of the lake and run clear out of the valley — I would surely never be back here again.
‘Nothing,’ I muttered. ‘Better go, I suppose …’
The final decision that it was time to face my family was taken out of my hands by a shrill but strong voice.
‘Who are you?’
I looked about me, startled. ‘Who said that?’ The voice seemed to have come from nowhere.
‘Me!’
‘Try looking down, Yaotl,’ suggested Handy. ‘I can tellyou’re not used to children!’ He crouched down next to me. ‘What’s your name, then?’